Terra Pericolosa

Cast[]

Main cast[]

Featured cast[]

Plot[]

"She's come a very long way. Most of that progress is testament to her great strength, yes."

— Holmes to Watson about Kitty

With Watson having returned from Denmark, Kitty brings Clyde back to Watson's apartment. Kitty mentions that she's made friends at a coffee house near the Brownstone but Holmes has been keeping her too busy to see much of them. Receiving a text from Holmes, she goes to the map room at a library. The curator, Rafael, reports several stolen maps and shows Kitty signs of a break-in which, to preserve donor confidence and insurance purposes, he doesn't want reported to the police. Kitty discovers a security guard's keys have been used to open a map drawer and the body of the guard hidden in a display case. Later with Holmes, Watson, Captain Gregson and Detective Bell at the scene, Holmes deduces which stolen map was of import to the thief. The map, "The County of King James, Virginia, 1794" was loaned to the library by the Bray family which still maintains a charity in NYC.

You must be so proud.

Visiting Margaret Bray at her charity's office, she's surprised to learn of the map's existence and confirms her family came from the area shown in the map. She's unconcerned with the map's theft even though it's worth $200,000. She agrees to help find other institutions who may have had thefts that went unreported. That evening, Watson is surprised to find Kitty show up at her apartment to deliver a few of Clyde's items instead of meeting her friends for drinks. The next day at the Brownstone, Watson arrives to find that Holmes believes he has found the criminal. Noting that in the days before the break-in, the guest book was signed by "René Duchez", he looked for an admirer of Duchez, a WW2 French resistance fighter who stole the maps of Nazi Germany's Atlantic Wall. Holmes found former cartography student Stuart Zupko, who owns a map framing shop and was convicted of burglary.

Why did the thief targeted that map?

Zupko is found shot dead at his shop with all the stolen maps including the Bray map which is laid out. However, Holmes sees the Bray map is a fake. At the precinct, Margaret is shown the fake map, which was made in the 1940s. Believing that Zupko's killer discovered it was fake, Gregson warns Margaret that since her family last had the real map, the killer may come after her. Watson meets Holmes at the Brownstone where he's found that the Bray map was originally part of a 1780's atlas. Posing on-line as an attractive woman, Amber, he's trying to arrange a meeting with Austin Cornblatt, who is assembling the atlas from the individual maps. In order to get Kitty more free time to spend with her new friends, Watson offers to help Holmes more, but he won't relent giving Kitty various tasks. After Cornblatt sends a message that he sold the atlas maps, Holmes arranges a meeting. Thinking he's meeting Amber, instead Bell meets Cornblatt.

Get your own protégée, Watson.

Believing that Amber was under 18 and that he's about to be arrested, Bell tells Cornblatt that in exchange for information on who bought the atlas maps, his correspondence with Amber will remain secret. Waiting at a lawyer's office, Holmes tells Watson that among those at the coffee shop is a young man who is interested in Kitty. As Watson realizes Holmes has been keeping Kitty busy so she can't see him, they are led into a meeting with real estate tycoon William Hull. The buyer of Cornblatt's atlas, Hull offers it to them but since it's missing the Bray map, it's of no use to their case. Hull is also interested in finding the Bray map and offers to hire Holmes and Watson. Indicating he may know a third party who is also interested in the map and may have hired Zupko, Holmes abruptly leaves. Explaining to Watson that Hull was trying to buy their allegiance, he's also realized the map itself isn't what is of interest, but the information on the original map.

You'll be making an obscene amount of money.

At the Brownstone, having printed out a copy of the Bray map from the library, Holmes believes something was changed on the map from the original and proposes looking at photos from the Bray archives to see if the original appears in one. Kitty's phone rings and after Holmes says she shouldn't answer it, Kitty leaves the room. Watson disagrees with Holmes trying to control Kitty's life while he is firm that he's trying to protect her from emotional harm. The next morning Holmes wakes Watson and shows her that the forged map and the original are identical. However, a river in the map has shifted its course over the last 200 years. A casino is planned for construction on a site on an Indian reservation, which due to the shifting of the river, is actually not on the reservation. Existence of the original map would spell the end of the casino project, costing billions.

The answer is to shine a bright light in my face.

Hull owns casinos that the Indian casino would take business away from. However, he didn't know of the map's existence until after the library break-in. Holmes, Kitty and Watson visit a casino run by Leon Moody, head of the Algonquian Gaming Commission. Moody's group is behind the planned casino construction that would be affected by the Bray map. He refuses to answer their questions until Kitty points out questionable gaming practices that she's filmed. In Moody's office, he shows them another forged Bray map. Having learned of its existence at the library a few weeks before and knowing it could harm the planned casino, he had the forgery made, intending to switch it for the one in the library. But learning of the theft and murder and, that the map in the library was a fake, the threat to the planned casino was eliminated. As Watson looks at a model of the planned casino, she realizes who is behind the library theft and murder.

We never did anything illegal with it.

Margaret is called to the precinct where Holmes shows her the casino's forged Bray map. Watson points out that the land the casino is planned to be built on is actually owned by her family. When the Bray map was put on-line by the library, Margaret realized it could be used to stop the casino construction. She hired a forger to use ink from the 1940's to create a fake and after she had Zupko steal the real map, she killed him and left the forgery at his shop and took the real map. However, the forger actually gave her a copy he made and kept the real map for himself. Having found the forger and the real map, the forger confessed and, Margaret's fingerprints were found on the real map. At the Brownstone, Holmes tells Kitty that he knows that a young man from the coffee shop, Zachary, is interested in her. (♫ Brett Detar - Losers Baby ♫) He confesses to keeping her busy to avoid possibly being hurt by him. Kitty indicates she knew what Holmes was doing and that it made her feel very protected and loved. Holmes offers Kitty more free time and invites her and Zachary to a museum.